Just Breathe
by CrossRow
Summary: She was never one to believe in self sacrifice, until Bruce Wayne flew the bomb out of Gotham. Her mind thought he was dust in the wind, but her heart knew that there was hope.


**Just Breathe  
**

**All Characters belong to Christopher Nolan**

** All DC characters belong to DC Comics**

* * *

Prominent coffee-colored eyes looked outward at the fading mushroom cloud in the distance. She scolded herself for stripping her mask away and letting a self righteous man see the woman underneath. She was a fool to even think there was a probability.

In her impermanent world, there were no second chances for the sins she endured. The taste of his heated mouth still lingered down the walls of her throat.

"Son of a bitch" Selina chimed as the unnerving truth etched her soul. She opened her gloved hand and looked at the USB drive that contained the download file of the clean slate program that he had given to her during the hellish situation of Bane's total take of the city. She was ready to toss the flash drive in the river as his face appeared in her twisted thoughts.

He was gone. She had no reason to give a damn about his fate. Her lips pressed against him twice - at the Wayne Enterprises Charity Ball and before the final take off with the bomb. The death of Batman was not such a big deal to her. She had kissed many men in her life. Betraying Bruce was the downfall that made her think that she was purely a selfish woman that only got what she wanted. The question that lodged into her mind was why did she have a soft spot for the man who wore two masks- the playboy recluse that she brought out of hiding and the Dark Knight that she captivated by his humility, devotion and fighting spirit. She knew he could of escaped from this hell hole of a city, live a life of luxury with his trust funds, but instead he came back and saved everyone from becoming piles of ash. He saved her ass.

Selina shook off her solemn feelings and angled her head to look at the parked Bat pod waiting her to revved the engine and high tail it out of the city without the weight of police file and mug shots on her shoulders.

"Time to leave with deadbeat city." She was ready to move on with her new found life.

A cold chill trickled down her spine as her teeth mashed her bottom lip. She kept her poise calm, however involuntary.

"Come on, get a hold of yourself," She muttered. " There are no such things as ghosts. He is dead. Gone. Not coming back to haunt you."

There was an odd feeling surging in her veins that deception was at play. A hand reached behind for the pistol, she was always armed to danger. Always two steps ahead of the game of life and death and always strong willed for every situation she came to face.

Blood was scorching every fiber of her body as heart throbbed to the unsettled feelings that crept over her, thick eyelashes bashed together as breath paced and skin crawled. She moved closer to the edge of the dock and saw something floating in the crashing waves of the shoreline. A dark, motionless lump.

"Well, what do you know," she purred racing down the steps and onto the mucky sand as her stiletto heels sunk deeper into the moist ground. Without any thought she pulled the boots and bolted to the lifeless figure lying face down, the curtain length cape was torn. She gingerly advanced closer and quickly flipped the body over and gazed deeply at the sand covered lips concealed by a wall of graphite. There were no visible wounds to mend- she was in no condition to display compassion for him at the moment. She checked his pulse and then presumed that he had passed out from exhaustion as the water of Gotham Bay filled his air flow. Trending in the water with a heavy Kevlar suit was enough to leave him breathless.

"You're not going a sucker this time, Wayne." Selina reviled feeling the weaken pulse from her gloved fingertips. She had to act fast and without any hesitation, she enveloped both of her hands over the center of his chest and began to press down to pump the air back into his lungs.

"Come on, handsome, I know that you are too stubborn to die."She shouted, gritting her teeth together as her gums became numb. She bent her head and opened his pale lips with her redden blades and released a force of her breath into his lungs.

She narrowed her teary eyes looking at the colorless lower part of his face. With both hands, she lifted the cowl, grasping both sides and threw the mask aside not caring where it landed. Her solemn misty glare became entranced to the cadaverous face of the man that had robbed her heart. His eyelids were closed and cheeks produced no tone of rose. This was the man that her weak-hearten poise loved. A shaky hand lightly touched his swollen cheek and slowly lifted the bloody gash above his eyebrow.

Selina pounded a fist on his armor plated chest. She was at the point of giving up.

Wetness rapidly streamed down her cheeks. She dug her lips into the center of his bat insignia. "Please Bruce..." Breath strangled. "Don't leave me alone in this impermanent world." Her eyes burned as she pumped his chest again- she could not allow herself to let him go. Biting words entered her mind as she kept on forcing the breath into him. His pulse was fading. "Come on Bruce. I know you are a survivor." Her lungs chanted. "This is not your defeat."

His smooth lips parted releasing crackles of air as his tongue curled to the roof of his mouth. Eyes flickered as they slightly opened locking her into the mixtures of emerald -gray and gold. He reeled up, choking and spitting out the river water before grasping for polluted air.

Batman jerked to the sudden sharp throb in his back. He appeared to be dazed and panicked stricken. Hazy eyes shifted to the masked woman kneeling by his side. "I am dead?" He slurred faintly.

Selina wiped the tears from her eyes. "Not yet." She quickly stated as her hand eased him back to a dry spot heaving of untouched sand. Light flurries started to fall down on his armor.

She punched him in the arm. "You bastard," She hissed. "I thought you had died in the explosion. You lied to me about having no autopilot."

"It took a less busy mind to work out the bugs in the system. I had to make sure that flew out far away from the city before I placed the Bat in manual drive. But I never thought I would survive the blast." he wheezed out as eyes were growing dim.

She shook him gently. "Come on. Up, Wayne, we have to clear out of here." Her arm hooked into his shapely arm. She muttered lancing an arm under his body. "Wayne Manor is only a few miles away." He made her freeze as his gripping glove hand touched her cheek.

"No, I have a bunker not far from here..." He breathed out as his vigorous arms embraced her shivering body. He eased his lips to overlap over the scarlet brimmed flesh as her body ignited with heat of his kiss- she felt like her mind was melting into sheer glorious contact. They were alive and that was all the mattered to them.

"We cannot stay in the city. Not when you are a dead man." she asked, pulling away from his lips panting for air. Her hand grasped both sides of the cowl and pulled it off, throwing it to the side and studying battered features of his face. The scar on his forehead a reminder of his first encounter with Bane.

She felt every level of her body being intoxicated. Warmth was coming back to her frozen body as his hand slipped underneath the domino mask and handled light in-between his fingers making her exposed to his dazed eyes.

"I knew there was more to you, Selina Kyle." he breathed, feeling feverish as she leaned him back and allowed her tongue to taste his mouth once more.

Selina could not believe that her life was turning around. She had always known herself to be the Mistress of disguise, the efficient society grifter and the uncaring woman who only looked out for number one. "So what do we after you stitch yourself up? I know that you are planning something." She said after they broke their kiss.

Bruce felt a slight smile creep over his lips. "Bats are adaptable creatures." he spoke softly.

Selina widened her lips into a grin and circled a finger over his armor. "Let's just take it one day at a time, Wayne. After all you did technically come back from the dead."

"I was dead for a long time, Selina." He responded, always thinking that he was the man who would be - self-contained, untrusting, heavily guarded with his concealed emotions. He had changed. It was a slow process to endure with betrayal, heartache and perseverance.

Bruce had given his heart away twice to women that he thought were the beacons of hope that would lead him astray from the life of the dingy cave. He allowed himself to become a second guesser to his own desires and suffered the outcomes by loosing a good friend that was always there for him and creating a vengeful enemy that stabbed him in the heart.

Rejuvenation came back into his body when a pair of red lips gave challenging kiss against his lips on the dance floor. He let her slip away through the crowd. Then the second kiss in front of Commissioner Gordon and the smashed truck that contained the body of Talia al Ghul. That was the one embrace that gave him a reason to survive. A reason to come back.

Bruce stared directly into her darken hues as the tip of his nose pressed against her own.

"You breathed life back into me, Selina," Bruce said as he tenderly canopied his lips once more onto her scarlet blades he sucked the air from her fervid lungs. He kissed her long and deep.

Selina lightly closed her eyes and murmured blissfully. Her gloved hands dug into the thickness of his drenched chestnut hair as she could smell the icy waters of Gotham Bay drain from his pores. " Breathe, Bruce." she whispered, speaking against his lips, hand was over his heart. "Just breathe."


End file.
